Beautiful Beasts

by Nicholas Knight

  The monkey beast hurried to obey, redressing with startling alacrity. How many times had she cause to dress herself so quickly, Loretta wondered? She ceased wondering as she noticed what the wizard had come out of the cabinet carrying. It was an empty syringe with a long, wicked needle.

  The beast’s eyes fell upon it and widened. She stepped back.

  “Easy,” Moreau said.

  The beast glanced at Loretta. She stepped forward, finding herself no longer compelled by Moreau’s anima, and grasped the girl’s hand.

  “I just need to draw some blood,” the wizard said, offering an almost embarrassed smile. “If I might just see your arm for a moment?”

  Slowly, the beast extended her arm. Her grip on Loretta’s hand went tight as the needle found her flesh. The syringe filled quickly with blood.

  “There,” said the wizard. “All done.”

  He tossed the needle into a waste chute in the wall and took the vial to a contraption at another work station. This one was made of many gears and tubes. He inserted the vial into a slot and cranked a lever on the side of the machine. There was a ratcheting sound as he worked, clicking as if it were angry. When he let it go and pressed a button on the other side, steam erupted from one of the tubes on the side, and the part of the contraption which held the vial of blood began to spin.

  “We’re lucky to have one of these,” the wizard said, rolling up the sleeves of his robes, revealing more ink stains along his forearms. “Otherwise you’d have to wait several days for me to study it beneath a microscope and correlate my findings with the correct text.”

  A circle rose up from the base, rising to just below the spinning vial. From the length holding it came another protrusion that began spinning. It was not unlike looking at the hands of a clock, Loretta realized. There were four primary sections along the circle, but a smaller variety of degrees within each.

  The smaller needle came to a halt first and a small diagram flipped out from the side of the machine. Master Jacqemin looked at it and grunted.

  “Obviously her bestia seed is mammalian based,” he said with a scoff. “Tell us something we don’t know, you useless contraption.”

  Loretta raised an eyebrow. Hadn’t he just said they were lucky to have this thing?

  The wizard’s fingers continued to peruse the diagram. “Primate. Of course. Monkey…Hmmm.” He held out a hand and a heavy book flew from the shelf, unaided, into it.

  Loretta jumped. The last time she had seen a wizard perform such a feat…then again, at least she now had proof that Master Jacquemin was, in fact, a wizard. She had begun to have her doubts. After all, anyone could use a machine if properly trained.

  Jacquemin opened the book and flipped through it, before settling on a page. “Hah. I’d bet my microscope that she’s a mantled howler monkey.” He dropped the book atop a pile of notes, letting it fall closed. “She had some golden fur on her lower back whilst she was Rampant, no?”

  “We didn’t get a good look,” Moreau replied dryly.

  Jacquemin seemed not to notice. His eyes had fallen upon the original piece of the contraption holding the vial. This had finally come to a stop. “Phenomenon type. Hmmm, this may take a few moments. That type of orbis seed is always more complicated to identify.”

  It did take him a few moments. Tome after tome flew to his hands and a pile quickly accumulated beside the original book of fauna he’d summoned to him. “Stars…” the wizard muttered. “No…the moon. Definitely the moon…that’s it!”

  He held up an open book, a look of triumph on his face. Loretta dearly wished she retained the capacity to read. The wizard’s enthusiasm was contagious, and she found herself bouncing again on the balls of her feet, this time in anticipation.

  “Her orbis seed is a lunar eclipse,” Jacquemin said to Moreau. “I’ll bet you’ve noticed a faint glow about her on occasion.”

  Moreau nodded and so did Loretta. So, that hadn’t been a trick of the light, then.

  “What sort of abilities might that grant?” Moreau asked.

  Jacquemin shrugged. “I’d imagine something along the lines of removing light or vanishing.”

  “If she could do that, she would have done so when…we first encountered her,” Moreau said.

  “Not if it was daylight,” Jacquemin said. “Likely her abilities only work at night.”

  Loretta nodded. “She vanished last night.”

  “Invisibility,” Moreau said slowly. “But only at night.”

  “Yes,” the wizard said, nodding with the same enthusiasm, just as oblivious to the disappointment in Moreau’s tone as everything else. “I should think that might make her an excellent scout or night watch.”

  “It would at that,” Moreau said, nodding. “We can certainly make use of it.”

  What had he been hoping for, Loretta wondered?

  “Sauvage next, if you please, Master Wizard,” Moreau said.

  Loretta jumped. She was next. This was it.

  Gritting her teeth, she stepped forward and disrobed. A little indignity was worth the price of her restored humanity. The wizard examined her in the same manner he had the other beast, and when it came time to have her blood drawn, Loretta nearly knocked the syringe from his hand in her hurry to get her arm outstretched.

  Jacquemin laughed, took her blood, and then inserted the vial into his contraption. Loretta found herself bouncing again, watching the needles spin. How would it tell the wizard what she was? Would the arms never cease their spinning, or would it lead him to examine book after book, questing for answers and finding none? Would it blow up?

  The smaller needle halted, and the book Jacquemin had used to identify the mantled howler monkey seed flew up to the wizard’s hand. He flipped through his pages, eyes darting back and forth between them and the diagram that had flipped out. “Mammal. Obviously, look at the fur. Carnivorous, of course. Ah…ahah!”

  He spun about, and pointed at Moreau with the book. “Her bestia seed is a weasel!”

  Loretta blinked at him. A weasel? One of the seeds inside of her was the spirit of a tiny little vermin! A chittering sound escaped her as every follicle of fur on her body stood on end, and she clamped a hand over her mouth.

  “That makes sense,” Moreau said, nodding, amusement flowing through their roots. She glared at him. For once, he seemed as oblivious as Jacquemin. “She can hardly sit still, though that may in part be due to her orbis seed. Highly aggressive. Quick. Doesn’t seem to care what or who she fights. Inquisitive.”

  Loretta felt her ear and eye twitching in tandem as they verbally dissected her behavior and attributed it to a creature barely more than a furry snake. A weasel? It was positively undignified! If she ever got hold of Lorenz Gage, she would rip his throat out with her bare hands. Had he known what type of seed his was instilling within her when he’d used that device of his? If he had, she would make him suffer. A weasel!

  “Hmmm, the other one is still going,” Jacquemin noted. Loretta’s eyes shot back to the device. How could she have let herself become distracted? This was it. The moment her humanity was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  The vial slowed to a stop above the same area of the circle as Moreau’s new beast and a diagram popped out the side.

  “Another phenomenon type,” Jacquemin said, sounding excited. Books flew to him and he began perusing them. “Interesting. I’d almost think her orbis seed was wind based from these readings.” He switched to a different book. “Something motion-based.”

  “Dance,” Moreau said.

  Jacquemin’s head jerked up. “Truly?”

  Moreau nodded. “She has a very powerful response to music, and it explains her physique. Coupled with the weasel bestia, it’s a wonder she ever manages to sit still at all.”

  “Fascinating,” Jacquemin said, and this time a notebook and pen flew to his hands. The tip of the pen struck his thumb, leaving a fresh ink stain, which he ignored as he began scribb
ling notes. “You know, I’ve never heard of a dance orbis before. It’s wondrous what we are learning about the world thanks to our beasts.” He looked up from his note taking. “Did you know, we’ve only just discovered that coral is not flora at all, but in fact, a kind of fauna? Sir Dupont’s newest beast has a fire coral bestia and a phenomenon orbis.”

  “Phenomenon?” Moreau asked.

  “Yes,” Jacquemin said, nodding. “Oxidation. Quite powerful and quite useful. She can rust just about anything metal, though don’t mention to Sir Dupont that I told you. He likes to keep it a surprise”

  Moreau nodded with a conspiratorial smirk, a finger held to his lip.

  Loretta looked back and forth between the men, waiting for the reveal. She looked back to the machine. It wasn’t moving.

  “There you have it, Sir Moreau,” Master Jacquemin said. “Your menagerie consists of a lunar eclipse monkey and a dance weasel, both in excellent health, though in need of proper training, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “No,” Loretta said, voice a whisper. The examination wasn’t done. It couldn’t be done. The wizard hadn’t said anything about her not being a beast. Nothing had even registered with him. Just another casual examination. Another beast for him to process and catalogue.

  “No,” she said again. Louder. “You need to examine me again. This isn’t right.”

  “I can assure you my readings are accurate,” Jacuemin said, drawing himself up. “Don’t think I didn’t spot you getting all indignant over there when I identified your bestia seed. You don’t get to choose what seeds find you when you Fall.”

  “I did not Fall!” Loretta screamed. “I’m not a beast! I’m a human!”

  Jacquemin gave her a flat look. “And I’m a duquesa.”

  The mention of her mother’s title made something inside of her snap. Next thing Loretta knew, she was airborne, having launched herself, fangs first, at the wizard. She felt Moreau’s anima pull upon her own, but she was already in action. Her vision was red. The wizard was wrong. Wrong! She would rip out his throat and—

  Something hit her from the side, a white blur that struck with the force of a battering ram and let out a ROAR that drowned out Loretta’s own cry. Gegentiel had pounced, crashing into Loretta with more power than Loretta thought a single body could hold. They flew through the air and smashed through the window.

  Pain flared all over Loretta’s body as shards of razor-sharp glass and hook-like claws tore into her. She lashed out, delivering a kick that drove Gegenteil from her.

  Only then did it register with her conscious mind that they were both falling.

  Chapter Seven

  Gegenteil

  Loretta wasn’t sure how she knew to angle herself so that she spiraled toward the wall of pipes and machinery rushing by them. Everything seemed to be happening in a state of paradox. Blurred with speed and processed slowly. She nearly crashed into the wall, but twisted at the last instant, getting her feet under her and sprinting several yards down a thick pipe, and then using the momentum to propel her over onto one of the enormous rising gear mechanisms. She landed with something akin to grace, only for the gear to rumble beneath her so that her footing was compromised and her momentum carried her forward over the edge.

  She caught herself on the side of the gear. The shock of the impact made her feel as if her arm was about to be ripped off. She shouted in pain and let go, dropping the rest of the way to the ground and landing in a crouch, the impact jarring every bone in her body.

  Her limbs shook. Her shoulder ached. Her breathing was hard and coming too fast. What the hell had just happened?

  Loretta remembered. She’d tried to kill the wizard. Gegenteil had intercepted her and sent them both crashing through the window. A window overlooking Kerkenhal’s engine room. Was the beast insane?

  At least she couldn’t have fared any better from the fall. Some instinct made Loretta jerk her head up, and her eyes found the form of Gegenteil, standing tall and proud directly below the broken window they’d come out of. Her silk tunic had several tears from the shattered glass, which now littered the ground around her like the world’s sharpest garden, but otherwise she was unharmed. She didn’t even seem particularly disturbed to have dropped… however far that had been. Loretta could not have said.

  Those golden eyes set in her pale face bore into Loretta with an intensity that made the fur of her tail and the hair on the back of her neck rise.

  “Are you insane?” Loretta demanded. “You could have killed us both!”

  One of Gegenteil’s rounded ears twitched. “You assault my keeper, the wizard of The Company of Golden Swords, the same company your keeper is newly accepted to, and you ask me if I am insane for stopping you?”

  “He’s not a wizard,” Loretta spat. “He’s a fraud. That examination was a sham—” She cut off as Gegenteil leapt the distance between them in a single bound. There was no warning that she would attack. One instant she was stationary, the next she was all but upon her.

  A combination of instinct and reflex was all that saved Loretta. She threw herself to the side as black claws extended from the beast’s fingers like obsidian hooks, swiping right through where her head had been a fraction of a second before. Loretta never saw the follow up spin kick that caught her across the temple hard enough to make the world flash and sent her tumbling across the engine room, bursting through the clouds of steam.

  She was up in an instant, teeth bared. She tasted blood. Heard voices. They were not alone in the engine room. The guards were coming over to investigate.

  Loretta darted forward, knocking one young man’s feet out from under him and stealing his blade from the sheath at his side with a hiss of metal. She kicked him in the mouth to stifle his protest, kicked the other one across the head for good measure, and whirled upon Gegenteil, weapon at the ready.

  It was a well-balanced blade. Not quite of the make she’d trained with at the Academy, but close enough. This was far better than trying to bite out Gegenteil’s throat and the weapon felt good in her hand. It would be a controlled kill. Civilized. Even as she had the thought, a primitive part of her cackled with glee at the thought of the damage her new weapon could inflict. In short order, Gegenteil would be bleeding out at her feet.

  “Child,” Gegenteil said, not leaping, but walking slowly toward her, expression nonplussed. Loretta bared her fangs. She should be terrified. Few at the Academy had ever bested her with a blade, and had this creature really just called her “child” in that patronizing tone?

  “Think very carefully before you do whatever next bit of idiocy seizes you,” Gegenteil said. “You are newly Fallen, untrained, unstable, and so far out of your depth you cannot even comprehend it.”

  “I. Did. Not. Fall,” Loretta said, biting off each word. She saw red. Could smell the blood that was just beneath the flesh of the beast before her. She would open Gegenteil from groin to sternum, go back to that workshop, and if the wizard couldn’t be made to fix her, then he would be made to direct her to someone who could.

  Gegenteil let out a long-suffering sigh that only stoked the fury burning within Loretta. “Have it your own way.” She leapt again into the swift, lethal pounce that she had used twice before.

  Loretta was ready for it now, especially coming head on. She predicted her enemy’s trajectory, stepped to her left to avoid the incoming claws, and struck nothing but air. Gegenteil twisted about, somehow sliding in low beneath the blade, letting it pass harmlessly over her a scant half inch from her flesh, and came in at Loretta low, aiming for her feet.

  Loretta leapt back. Then leapt again as Gegentiel continued to come at her, too close and fast for her to get the sword up between them. Loretta kicked out, aiming for the beast’s face. Hard her opponent been human, it would have been a brilliant move.

  Gegenteil was not human. She opened her mouth, no, her maw wide, revealing massive, predatory hunting teeth that would have ripped Loretta’s leg
off had she not abandoned her counter attack and yanked it back. The edge of the fangs still caught her flesh and tore ribbons of it and cloth from her trousers free in a spray of blood.

  Loretta stumbled. Gegenteil closed and struck with her claws, grazing them across Loretta’s throat. Loretta staggered back, free hand going to her throat as she tried to find her balance.

  She had to hold in the blood. She had to…there was no blood. There was not even broken skin. The only pain she felt were from the hurts she’d accumulated from her fall to the engine room, and the slight sting in her leg. Loretta’s throat was completely intact and her leg hadn’t been more than scratched by those killer fangs.

  Her gaze snapped to Gegenteil. The bitch could have killed her. If not in that instant, then in a follow up attack while Loretta had been distracted. She hadn’t. She stood there, a few paces removed from sword reach, not looking bored, exactly, but the expression was close.

  “You’re dead,” Gegenteil said, and Loretta realized it had been deliberate. The attack which could have killed her had been held, and instead all that had been delivered was a taunting, empty-clawed graze.

  Loretta had only thought she was mad before. How dare this beast make sport of her? Rage gripped her, and, with a scream, she went on the offensive.

  She drew upon every fencing lesson from her time at the Academy and pushed it into an offensive maneuver, powered by the ferocity she had drawn upon back in Saunet. She bared her teeth in a grin as Gegenteil’s golden eyes widened in her pale face and the beast was forced back. Loretta’s blade missed and missed and missed. But each attack brought her a little closer to her target. The tip whispered across Gegenteil’s cheek, flinging free a brief splash of blood.

  The pair of them were fast. So fast, Loretta could not have said which was the swifter. There was no doubt Gegenteil was the stronger, but that counted for less in a fight with blades than speed. Loretta had that, reach, and ferocity on her side.

  And skill.